The examples of ancient confederacies, cited in my last paper, have
not exhausted the source of experimental instruction on this
subject. There are existing institutions, founded on a similar
principle, which merit particular consideration. The first which
presents itself is the Germanic body.
In the early ages of Christianity, Germany was occupied by seven
distinct nations, who had no common chief. The Franks, one of the
number, have conquered the Gauls, established the kingdom which has
taken its name from them. In the ninth century Charlemagne, its
warlike monarch, carried his victorious arms in every direction; and
Germany became a part of his vast dominions. On the dismemberment,
which took place under his sons, this part was erected into a
separate and independent empire. Charlemagne and his immediate
descendants possessed the reality, as well as the ensigns and
dignity of imperial power. But the principal vassals, whose fiefs
had become hereditary, and who composed the national diets which
Charlemagne had not abolished, gradually threw off the yoke and
advanced to sovereign jurisdiction and independence. The force of
imperial sovereignty was insufficient to restrain such powerful
dependents; or to preserve the unity and tranquillity of the empire.
The most furious private wars, accompanied with every species of
calamity, were carried on between the different princes and states.
The imperial authority, unable to maintain the public order,
declined by degrees till it was almost extinct in the anarchy, which
agitated the long interval between the death of the last emperor of
the Suabian, and the accession of the first emperor of the Austrian
lines. In the eleventh century the emperors enjoyed full
sovereignty: In the fifteenth they had little more than the symbols
and decorations of power.
Out of this feudal system, which has itself many of the important
features of a confederacy, has grown the federal system which
constitutes the Germanic empire. Its powers are vested in a diet
representing the component members of the confederacy; in the
emperor, who is the executive magistrate, with a negative on the
decrees of the diet; and in the imperial chamber and the aulic
council, two judiciary tribunals having supreme jurisdiction in
controversies which concern the empire, or which happen among its
members.
The diet possesses the general power of legislating for the empire;
of making war and peace; contracting alliances; assessing quotas of
troops and money; constructing fortresses; regulating coin;
admitting new members; and subjecting disobedient members to the ban
of the empire, by which the party is degraded from his sovereign
rights and his possessions forfeited. The members of the confederacy
are expressly restricted from entering into compacts prejudicial to
the empire; from imposing tolls and duties on their mutual
intercourse, without the consent of the emperor and diet; from
altering the value of money; from doing injustice to one another; or
from affording assistance or retreat to disturbers of the public
peace. And the ban is denounced against such as shall violate any of
these restrictions. The members of the diet, as such, are subject in
all cases to be judged by the emperor and diet, and in their private
capacities by the aulic council and imperial chamber.
The prerogatives of the emperor are numerous. The most important of
them are: his exclusive right to make propositions to the diet; to
negative its resolutions; to name ambassadors; to confer dignities
and titles; to fill vacant electorates; to found universities; to
grant privileges not injurious to the states of the empire; to
receive and apply the public revenues; and generally to watch over
the public safety. In certain cases, the electors form a council to
him. In quality of emperor, he possesses no territory within the
empire, nor receives any revenue for his support. But his revenue
and dominions, in other qualities, constitute him one of the most
powerful princes in Europe.
From such a parade of constitutional powers, in the representatives
and head of this confederacy, the natural supposition would be, that
it must form an exception to the general character which belongs to
its kindred systems. Nothing would be further from the reality. The
fundamental principle on which it rests, that the empire is a
community of sovereigns, that the diet is a representation of
sovereigns, and that the laws are addressed to sovereigns, renders
the empire a nerveless body, incapable of regulating its own
members, insecure against external dangers, and agitated with
unceasing fermentations in its own bowels.
The history of Germany is a history of wars between the emperor and
the princes and states; of wars among the princes and states
themselves; of the licentiousness of the strong, and the oppression
of the weak; of foreign intrusions, and foreign intrigues; of
requisitions of men and money disregarded, or partially complied
with; of attempts to enforce them, altogether abortive, or attended
with slaughter and desolation, involving the innocent with the
guilty; of general imbecility, confusion, and misery.
In the sixteenth century, the emperor, with one part of the empire
on his side, was seen engaged against the other princes and states.
In one of the conflicts, the emperor himself was put to flight, and
very near being made prisoner by the elector of Saxony. The late
king of Prussia was more than once pitted against his imperial
sovereign; and commonly proved an overmatch for him. Controversies
and wars among the members themselves have been so common, that the
German annals are crowded with the bloody pages which describe them.
Previous to the peace of Westphalia, Germany was desolated by a war
of thirty years, in which the emperor, with one half of the empire,
was on one side, and Sweden, with the other half, on the opposite
side. Peace was at length negotiated, and dictated by foreign
powers; and the articles of it, to which foreign powers are parties,
made a fundamental part of the Germanic constitution.
If the nation happens, on any emergency, to be more united by the
necessity of self-defence, its situation is still deplorable.
Military preparations must be preceded by so many tedious
discussions, arising from the jealousies, pride, separate views, and
clashing pretensions of sovereign bodies, that before the diet can
settle the arrangements, the enemy are in the field; and before the
federal troops are ready to take it, are retiring into winter
quarters.
The small body of national troops, which has been judged necessary
in time of peace, is defectively kept up, badly paid, infected with
local prejudices, and supported by irregular and disproportionate
contributions to the treasury.
The impossibility of maintaining order and dispensing justice among
these sovereign subjects, produced the experiment of dividing the
empire into nine or ten circles or districts; of giving them an
interior organization, and of charging them with the military
execution of the laws against delinquent and contumacious members.
This experiment has only served to demonstrate more fully the
radical vice of the constitution. Each circle is the miniature
picture of the deformities of this political monster. They either
fail to execute their commissions, or they do it with all the
devastation and carnage of civil war. Sometimes whole circles are
defaulters; and then they increase the mischief which they were
instituted to remedy.
We may form some judgment of this scheme of military coercion from a
sample given by Thuanus. In Donawerth, a free and imperial city of
the circle of Suabia, the Abbe de St. Croix enjoyed certain
immunities which had been reserved to him. In the exercise of these,
on some public occasions, outrages were committed on him by the
people of the city. The consequence was that the city was put under
the ban of the empire, and the Duke of Bavaria, though director of
another circle, obtained an appointment to enforce it. He soon
appeared before the city with a corps of ten thousand troops, and
finding it a fit occasion, as he had secretly intended from the
beginning, to revive an antiquated claim, on the pretext that his
ancestors had suffered the place to be dismembered from his
territory,(footnote 1.) he took possession of it in his own name,
disarmed, and punished the inhabitants, and reannexed the city to
his domains.
It may be asked, perhaps, what has so long kept this disjointed
machine from falling entirely to pieces? The answer is obvious: The
weakness of most of the members, who are unwilling to expose
themselves to the mercy of foreign powers; the weakness of most of
the principal members, compared with the formidable powers all
around them; the vast weight and influence which the emperor derives
from his separate and hereditary dominions; and the interest he
feels in preserving a system with which his family pride is
connected, and which constitutes him the first prince in
Europe;--these causes support a feeble and precarious Union; whilst
the repellent quality incident to the nature of sovereignty, and
which time continually strengthens, prevents any reform whatever,
founded on a proper consolidation. Nor is it to be imagined, if this
obstacle could be surmounted, that the neighboring powers would
suffer a revolution to take place, which would give to the empire
the force and preeminence to which it is entitled. Foreign nations
have long considered themselves as interested in the changes made by
events in this constitution; and have, on various occasions,
betrayed their policy of perpetuating its anarchy and weakness.
If more direct examples were wanting, Poland, as a government over
local sovereigns, might not improperly be taken notice of. Nor could
any proof more striking be given of the calamities flowing from such
institutions. Equally unfit for self-government and self-defence, it
has long been at the mercy of its powerful neighbors; who have
lately had the mercy to disburden it of one third of its people and
territories.
The connection among the Swiss cantons scarcely amounts to a
confederacy; thought it is sometimes cited as an instance of the
stability of such institutions. They have no common treasury; no
common troops even in war; no common coin; no common judicatory; nor
any other common mark of sovereignty.
They are kept together by the peculiarity of their topographical
position; by their individual weakness and insignificancy; by the
fear of powerful neighbors, to one of which they were formerly
subject; by the few sources of contention among a people of such
simple and homogeneous manners; by their joint interest in their
dependent possessions; by the mutual aid they stand in need of, for
suppressing insurrections and rebellions, an aid expressly
stipulated, and often required and afforded; and by the necessity of
some regular and permanent provision for accommodating disputes
among the cantons. The provision is, that the parties at variance
shall each choose four judges out of the neutral cantons, who, in
case of disagreement, choose an umpire. This tribunal, under an oath
of impartiality, pronounces definitive sentence, which all the
cantons are bound to enforce. The competency of this regulation may
be estimated by a clause in their treaty of 1683, with Victor
Amadeus of Savoy; in which he obliges himself to interpose as
mediator in disputes between and cantons, and to employ force, if
necessary, against the contumacious party.
So far as the peculiarity of their case will admit of comparison
with that of the United States, it serves to confirm the principle
intended to be established. Whatever efficacy the union may have had
in ordinary cases, it appears that the moment a cause of difference
sprang up, capable of trying its strength, it failed. The
controversies on the subject of religion, which in three instances
have kindled violent and bloody contests, may be said, in fact, to
have severed the league. The Protestant and Catholic cantons have
since had their separate diets, where all the most important
concerns are adjusted, and which have left the general diet little
other business than to take care of the common bailages.
That separation had another consequence, which merits attention. It
produced opposite alliances with foreign powers: of Berne, at the
head of the Protestant association, with the United Provinces; and
of Luzerne, at the head of the Catholic association, with France.
Signed "PUBLIUS"
Footnotes Explained:
Footnote Number 1. Pfeffel, "Nouvel Abreg. Chronol. de l'Hist.,
etc., d'Allemagne," says the pretext was to indemnify himself for
the expense of the expedition.
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